Mom, 10th post

 Unfortunately, she is the same. Hospice nurse coming every day now, her vitals are the same, her breathing strong & regular. Virtually no urine output (the catheter is still in, so that also means she’s clean). She feels very warm, although her temp is remaining about 98.4, which is a little high for her. While she did clamp down on a mouth swab a little bit ago (mouth breathing, so very dry) that is probably just reflex, as she had no reaction to my putting in the eye gel.

I was up a bit late, and then called the techs at 1:00 am to check on her, which lead to a crying jag until after 2:00 am, so am more tired than would like. Since she is so stable Beth didn’t come, I plan on leaving about 7:00 pm so can get some downtime and go to bed earlier. One of my favorite techs is on tonight, which gives me an extra measure of comfort, because I trust her to call me if there is any change. It doesn’t seem likely, but no way to predict. As noted before, I’m here for large swaths of time and gone for long ones, so if she has any control over when she dies she has a choice of my being present.

 Speaking of the techs, one of the other favorites stopped in at the end of her shift to check on Mom and chat. The techs here are, for the most part, absolutely wonderful, and my mother has been one of their favorites, as mentioned before. But I didn’t realize the extent until the conversation today, when she told me that the nursing director had called a meeting to tell them Mom was going on hospice, and did they feel they could handle the increased load or should she be transferred down to SNF? Apparently all at the meeting said there was no way they wanted her transferred, even if it meant more work for them, that they wanted to take care of her here, where she has been for five years. Gotta tell you, I teared up. They aren’t allowed to accept gifts, on talking with the nursing director yesterday asked her for the full names of the techs and nurses, so that I could write them glowing letters to go into their permanent files. And that was before I knew that they had insisted they would take care of Mom to the end. This, to me, is just incredible, especially in a time when you hear nothing but bad about people at their jobs. Just typing this brings on the tears.

 Today I was better about reading to her, some from a favorite book and several Baha’I prayers. Continued the easy listening or Mozart, which she’d requested years ago. I repeatedly told her I loved her, wanted her to leave this body that no longer served her, talked about family, pets & loved ones who will be waiting to greet her , hoping to let her know she can die and be at peace. Took a break after a while, went back to clearing things out, because it seems stupid not to cope with practicalities.

 There have been a couple rounds of decreasing her stuff, first when she moved to Wesley (then called Heritage Towers), then 5 years ago when she had to move to Personal Care, which is similar to Assisted Living, but fewer nurses. Despite those two rounds it’s amazing the amount of stuff that just accumulates, or wasn’t eliminated before ‘just in case’ she needed again. We’ve been going through some pictures over the years, and her memory was bad enough that a lot ended up getting tossed. Today I went through the drawer where ‘things to grab when going out’ have been stored, and amongst the tissues, emery boards, throat lozenges and Tic-Taks were multiple little plastic bags with pieces of cotton inside. Mom had lots of nosebleeds, so she carried around cotton with Vaseline so she could plug her nose if needed. She hasn’t had one while with me in at least a decade, so had completely forgotten about that little habit. Going through her stuff has been a reminder of how much we accumulate that means nothing after we’re gone and makes me want to do a massive purge. Sadly, by the time there is the time & energy to do that I’ll probably forget my current sage observation.

 Home, Mark had cooked a lovely meal, I cleaned up (and that took a while, because he uses a LOT of cookery & utensils), did my infusion, then a load of wash, just had some play time with Spice.

 It still feels unreal that my mother is dying.